


if nothing we do matters (then all that matters is what we do)

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Absence Makes The Heart Grow Terrified, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Meaningful Cuddling, Pathfinder Jyn Erso, Retreat from Hoth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 13:26:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11601579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Jyn and Cassian reunite several weeks after the retreat from Hoth, while the Rebel Alliance counts its dead.





	if nothing we do matters (then all that matters is what we do)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivyspinners](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/gifts).



> Written for Rosa, with the prompt that is now the title.

“ _Aquí_ ,” Shara Bey said shortly, dropping her grip on Cassian’s jacket and diving into the crowd. Cassian stopped and watched her move, dodging a droid here, ducking past someone with a cannon twice their size, slipping around a group giving and receiving makeshift medical attention. Kes Dameron was just about visible, tall and square-shouldered and square-faced, and Cassian could pick out Shara arrowing towards him by the orange of her flight-suit. He looked away, and devoted his attention to scanning the hall into which the Pathfinders had been herded after they’d disembarked. It stood to reason that Jyn would not be nearly as easy to spot - if she was even here.

If she was even alive, Cassian thought, and suppressed the shiver that ran up his reconstructed spine.

None of the Pathfinders had fought on Hoth, all of them dedicated to missions far from the nerve centre of the Rebel Alliance; Han Solo had only been planetside because of a Skywalker-and-Princess situation, and (related) the sudden urgency of the Hutts’ bounty on his head. The ambush nature of the attack on Hoth had meant the Pathfinders weren’t called back to defend Echo Base, but they wouldn’t have been even if there had been time. They were shock troops, reliably effective but wasted on regular infantry work, and their ability to create a destructive impact all out of proportion to their numbers was better used elsewhere, ruining supply lines and forcing the Imperials to fight on multiple fronts.

Cassian had been at Echo Base. He’d left with one of the last transports, co-piloting for a cursing Shara Bey, who would rather have been in a X-wing. They’d taken damage, but Bey was as good a pilot as everyone said, and they’d managed to rendezvous with one of the capital ships the Rebel Alliance had fled to - taking stock and licking its wounds.

That had been two weeks ago. Kaytoo had been with Cassian, and Baze and Chirrut had confirmed their survival before departing on some mysterious mission that was somehow related to Luke Skywalker’s highly inconvenient disappearance on Jedi business. Bodhi had met Cassian and Kaytoo off the transport, eyes a little feverish, fingers twisting together so fiercely he was in danger of dislocating something, and had spent some time refusing to let either Kaytoo or Cassian out of his sight. Particularly Cassian.

“I thought you were both dead,” Bodhi had said, fidgety and restless enough that looking at him was exhausting, “your communications gone out, and - Bey’s got a gift, but she doesn’t know these transports - and I found Baze and Chirrut - and now you’re here - but…”

Cassian had closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the cabin wall. His back ached, and it had lasted into the following day; he should have lain down and taken painkillers, but he had felt too sick and trapped with fear to act. “Sit down, Bodhi.”

There was a plastic chair with one too-short leg in Cassian’s narrow room. Bodhi had sat down on it hard, and he’d flailed a little as it rocked.

The end of Bodhi’s curtailed sentence had been Jyn’s name. Neither of them had heard from her at that point, and neither of them had any news of her now, a fortnight after Cassian had landed. The Pathfinders had taken casualties on their latest missions, but nobody knew who, or how many, and not even Cassian’s impressive clearance could get him any more details. He had kept his ears open, but no-one knew anything. The small group of individuals who had close friends, family members or lovers in the Pathfinders swapped stories and worries and hints of gossip, but Cassian had sifted through each thread of rumour and found that there was nothing to any of them.

The Battle of Hoth cast long and broken shadows. Reality got lost in them very easily.

So when Shara Bey had barged into Cassian in the lower deck mess, snapped ¡ _ven conmigo_! and grabbed him by the sleeve, Cassian had followed her. Shara knew all the pilots, everyone in traffic control, and - thanks to the dramatic arrival of her son - most of the medics. She was in a good position to know if the Pathfinders had really managed to collect themselves together and get a transport back to relative safety.

Cassian had told himself this as Shara had darted unerringly through busy corridors, dragging him in her wake. It made it easier to pretend that he wasn’t so desperate for information he would have taken a Hutt’s word for Jyn’s whereabouts.

There were only about thirty Pathfinders in the hall, three squads. There should have been more, but not that many more; they must have been lucky, surprisingly so. Cassian tried to quarter the hall efficiently, but it was difficult: people moved, they stood, they sat down, they were taller than Jyn, they got in the way. The hall was not a large one, the Pathfinders were fairly numerous, and the additional medical personnel, loved ones and friends filled it entirely.

Cassian’s heart was thundering uncomfortably, and there was a kind of panic rising in him. He had been round most of the room, and he couldn’t see her. No familiar voices had called out to him: no-one had stopped to say that Jyn had left him a message, had been dragged off to debrief or to take a comrade to the medical bay. There were a few people lying down or slumped in corners, and Cassian looked particularly closely at them, but none of them were Jyn. Maybe she’d already been taken to the medical bay; Jyn tended to resist treatment, but there were times when even she had to succumb to medical attention.

Cassian came to a halt when he reached the spot where he had started, looking around too wildly to really see anything. His breath was coming short, and he hadn’t run anywhere.

“Hey,” said a very familiar voice close behind him, and Cassian didn’t even feel himself whirl; he just knew that Jyn was in his arms now, her hands grasping his shoulders tightly and her face pressed into his chest. They must have been searching the hall for each other at the same time.

“I’m here,” she said, muffled, and then repeated it several times, in case he might forget.

Cassian tightened his grip on her, and hid his face in her hair. After several long moments, he straightened and held Jyn away from him a little, eyes sweeping up and down, looking for new injuries, signs of a fight. Same pale skin, same grey-green eyes, weary but bright; same tiny smile, newly scorched hair, unfamiliar clothes marked with blaster burn and a bandaged ankle just visible above the edge of one boot, split scarred knuckles and a purpling bruise on her cheekbone.

It could have been so much worse.

Breathless with relief, Cassian pulled her back against his chest and kissed her. The belated terror that washed over him as her hands wound into his hair and her tongue slid into his mouth cut straight through his breastbone:  _I could have lost you, you could have lost me, we almost died apart_.

Jyn must have sensed the tension in him. She bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, and soothed it with her tongue when he gasped, focus brought very firmly back to this moment and this time, where they were still together and still alive.

“Do you need a medic?” he said, when she finally let him up for air.

Jyn shook her head. Her eyes were shining, and the smile on her face was without shadows. “No. I need to get out of here.”

Cassian’s cabin was meant for two, despite the size: you could tell by the bed, which was just about large enough considering that Jyn was so small, storage enough for two people with few possessions, and a tiny private fresher. Jyn almost collapsed onto the bed, her face a little greyer than it had been in the hall, and Cassian knelt before her and helped her work her boots off as she removed her jacket and shirt. The bandage on her ankle was for a nasty sprain, nothing more, but she had limped all the way here.

Cassian got the rest of her layers off her - she was tired: he could see it in the slow movement of her fingers and the heaviness of her eyelids - and bundled the dirty clothes into a laundry bin while Jyn used the sonic fresher. He went to get her food, and found when he returned that she was sitting on the bed with her bad ankle stretched out in front of her, dressed in an oversized t-shirt of his and nothing else. Her kyber crystal still hung from her neck and her hair was loose and soft, a comb laid down as he walked in; she had redone the bandage on her ankle, but had left her other scrapes and bruises to themselves, and Cassian tended to them while she ate, sitting on the chair next to the bed and batting her hands away when she interfered. She ate like she was starving, which she might have been, and neither of them said a word until she’d finished.

“You’re overdressed,” Jyn said, leaning past him and putting the tray on the floor.

He huffed, rocking back on the rickety chair. “Sorry to disappoint.”

She smiled, and he smiled back at her as he unlaced his boots and stripped himself down to his underwear. “Any more orders?”

“Come here,” Jyn said, tilting her chin up with mock imperiousness, and Cassian climbed onto the bed next to her, wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged until she was draped half on top of him, their legs tangled together, her head tucked under his chin.

“Close enough?” he asked, now both his arms were folded round her, now he could feel her ribcage expanding and contracting with her steady breath. Her kyber crystal was wedged uncomfortably between them, but he didn’t care.

She nodded, and raised her head, lodging her sharp chin on his shoulder. He craned his neck to look down at her, but she wasn’t meeting his eyes: she was looking at something else, something only she could see.

“I thought you were dead,” she said, very soft, almost dispassionate. “We didn’t know much but we knew it was bad. I thought…”

“I think we all did.” Cassian lifted one hand and slid his fingers through her hair.

She leaned up and touched her lips to his, much more gently than she had earlier; when she pulled away she caught his eye. “How bad is it, Cassian?”

“I don’t know,” Cassian admitted. “I don’t think we’ll know for - months.” He took a deep breath. “We might have lost the war.”

Jyn curled closer to him, leaning her head against his shoulder, her face against his neck. Cassian rested his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes, and tried not to shake too hard.

“I don’t care,” Jyn said finally. “I’m not done.”

His arms tightened around her involuntarily.

“I mean it.” Jyn shook his grip off and climbed into his lap. Her hands cupped his face; he stared up at her, feeling powerless to do anything else. “I’m not done.”

“Good,” he said. His voice came out hoarse. “Good.”

Her thumbs were tracing the lines of his cheekbones. She was staring into his eyes, and Cassian wondered what she was seeing; whatever it was, it made her smile.

“If they kill us, we’ll make them bleed first,” Jyn said, so quietly Cassian barely heard her. Her smile widened, and her hands slipped back into his hair, the pads of her fingers rubbing idly at his scalp, the palms cradling his skull. “Together.”

Her face was very close to his, and her skin very hot against his, and Cassian laid his hands on her thighs and answered her with _te quiero_.

As their lips met again, he realised they had both said the same thing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at [ rain-sleet-snow](https://rain-sleet-snow.tumblr.com/). Come and say hi! :)


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